A Genesis of Speculative Empiricisms: Whitehead and Deleuze Read Hume

Deleuze's “transcendental empiricism” and the “empirical side” of Whitehead's metaphysics are paradoxical unless placed in the context of their unorthodox readings of empiricism. I explore this context focusing on their engagements with Hume. Both subvert presumptions of a categorical gap between external nature and internal human experience and open possibilities for a speculative empiricism that is nonreductive while still affirming experience as source for philosophical thinking. Deleuze and Whitehead follow Hume in beginning with events of sensation as primary but do not presume the logic of (human) subjects and objects (of nature) as necessary structuring polarities for their interpretation. This challenges a basic distinction (between inner and outer or between self and world) that seems inherent in the ordinary concept of experience, thus earning the moniker speculative. The speculative empiricist studies how these abstractions arise from events of experience prior to their consolidation in representation. This includes a critical component: to what extent do unexamined assumptions about conceptual abstraction hinder, block, or prefigure experiential attention? This critical component has existential implications for how we attend to the affective, intuitive, and preconceptual.     

Hume on Education

Hume claims that education is ‘disclaimed by philosophy, as a fallacious ground of assent to any opinion’ (T 1.3.10.1) and that it is ‘never . . . recogniz'd by philosophers’ (T 1.3.9.19). He is usually taken to be referring here to indoctrination. I argue, however, that his main concern is with association and those philosophers who emphasize the epistemic dangers of the imagination. These include Locke, Hutcheson and Descartes, but not Hume himself. Hume praises education, highlighting its role in the formation of general rules, and in fostering social conditions that encourage the growth of knowledge and moral virtue.     

Husserl on Hume

ABSTRACT

This article offers an account of the development of Husserl’s assessment of Hume’s position in the history of philosophy. In Husserl’s early treatment of Hume, Husserl’s interpretation was shaped by the anti-Kantian views of his teacher Franz Brentano. Later, however, Husserl concentrated on those themes in Hume’s philosophy that were of relevance for the development of his own conception of phenomenology. His analysis into the a priori structures of intentionality led the Husserl of Logical Investigations (1900–1901) to reject Hume’s nominalism and sensualism, and to criticize Hume’s naturalistic psychologism and fictionalism. Already at this point, however, Husserl appreciated Hume’s metaphysical neutrality as well as his radical starting point in the immediate givenness of consciousness. In the period following Husserl’s transcendental turn in Ideas I (1913), Hume is gradually re-assessed in the context of Husserl’s engagement with Kant as a philosopher who offers important insights concerning concrete problems of transcendental philosophy. For Husserl, Hume ultimately offers the first outline of a pure phenomenology and, indeed, becomes one of the most important forerunners of transcendental philosophy as such.     

大卫·休谟论公正

休谟认为 ,公正是一种社会契约 ,是尊重个人财产权的人为美德 ;功利是道德的最后裁判者 ,也是公正规则的唯一来源与基础 ;理想的社会与政府应以落实社会公正为目标 ,反对“平等主义”的社会利益分配。休谟还认为在特殊情况下 ,维护生存权的公正高于维护财产权的公正 ,从而为“剥夺剥夺者”的正当性留下了道德空间。休谟的公正理论虽有明显的时代和阶级的局限性 ,但对于当代社会的公正论研究仍有不可替代的借鉴价值。     

Hume on Mental Transparency

This article investigates Hume's account of mental transparency. In this article, I will endorse Qualitative Transparency – that is, the thesis that we cannot fail to apprehend the qualitative characters of our current perceptions, and these apprehensions cannot fail to be veridical – on the basis that, unlike its competitors, it is both weak enough to accommodate the introspective mistakes that Hume recognises, and yet strong enough to make sense of his positive employments of mental transparency. Moreover, Qualitative Transparency is also philosophically satisfying in providing good philosophical reason for why the mental states that are incorrigible should in fact be so.     

Deleuze and Naturalism

Abstract

Against the tendency to regard Deleuze as a materialist and a naturalistic thinker, I argue that his core philosophical writings involve commitments that are incompatible with contemporary scientific naturalism. He defends different versions of a distinction between philosophy and natural science that is inconsistent with methodological naturalism and with the scientific image of the world as a single causally interconnected system. He defends the existence of a virtual realm of entities that is irreconcilable with ontological naturalism. The difficulty of reconciling Deleuze’s philosophy with ontological naturalism is especially apparent in his recurrent conception of pure events that are irreducible to their incarnation in bodies and states of affairs. In the last section of this essay, I canvass some of the ways in which Deleuze’s thought might be reconciled with a more liberal, pluralist and ethical naturalism that he identified in an early essay on Lucretius.     

Hume on presentation and philosophy

Most philosophers agree that an argument's presentation is relevant to its philosophical merit. This paper explains why David Hume considered presentation philosophically important. On Hume's epistemology, presentation is closely connected with two principal aims of philosophical arguments: persuasion and epistemic justification. Hume's views imply that presentation is a factor determining an argument's persuasiveness and that, by philosophical standards of justification, presentation is also a factor determining the extent to which an argument's conclusion is justified.     

德勒兹与间性论

<正>间性论(interology/interalogy/metaxology)来自间性(interality)这一新词,它对应于本体论。~((2))彻底的间性论即便不会归并本体论,也有望吸纳或涵盖它;尽管我们对后者有意识形态上的留恋。归根结蒂,所谓的实体无非是在块茎式的关系场中生灭的倏忽而来倏忽而去的缘在(或者说相)、亚稳定的节点或者德勒兹意义上的事件。嫌恶流变、爱好稳定的心智视其为万物。如果我们足够切近地去审视本体论,我们就会看到间性论,正如仔细看时佛陀之树会成为块茎一样。~((3))本体论之于间性论犹如树之于块茎(或许有人会提议,犹如基督教之于佛教)。